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Soul Calibur II is back and is in high definition with online mode, and looks better than ever. This version includes the three extra characters Heihachi from Tekken, and Tod McFarlane’s Spawn, and Necrid. Sadly the Hero of Time, Link is not included. The legend is about to begin once again.
The game still holds up well even to today’s fighting games, all the characters and stages look sharper, and it looks gorgeous to see them in action. They kept all the single-player content like weapon master mode, arcade, survival, versus, team versus, practice, and the extra versions where you can use the weapons you acquired in weapon master mode, which is the best, especially when you unlock Nightmare’s silly weapon. The museum mode is still there where you can view highly detailed character exhibitions and profiles, (Taki and Ivy…cough) .There is no English to Japanese voice setting like there was previously, which some people are going to be sad about.
In addition they added an online feature which is stable most of the time, it cannot handle long distance connection, which is very frustrating when you are fighting an opponent and your inputs lag one second after you input the command to block or attack. The online sports two game modes: rank match and player match. It has no replay feature like Soul Calibur V, which is feature all online fighting games should have, and for some reason this is not the NTJC version of the game. It’s the PAL version released in Europe, which means that some characters attacks have a little more bite.
Overall, it will cause you to remember the good ol’ days when you didn’t need meter to use guard impact and took more skill to play, with intense mind games and footsies all the hardcore fans will love and newcomers alike.
PLATFORM: XBOXLIVE ARCADE-PLAYSATION STORE
PUB: NAMCO BANDAI
DEV: NAMCO BANDAI
ESRB: TEEN
TWO PLAYER SPLIT SCREEN OR ONLINE
ACHIEVEMENT AND TROPHY SUPPORT
COST: $20.